Le Torrent, etc

photo: ZDNet/CBS News

(Sarko likes my title, but I stole it. Evidently stealing's swell, 'cept when it isn't.)

Zack Whittaker, ZDNet:

12.18:
Everybody pirates: RIAA, Homeland Security caught downloading torrents

12.19 French presidential officials caught illegally downloading music


Truthdig.com, "30 Companies Paid Lobbyists More Than the IRS"


Roy Edroso, Village Voice:"Running Scared"
(via BDR)


"James Kirchick, who chronicled the hair-raising statements from Paul's newsletters in the New Republic four years ago, returned in the most recent edition of conservative magazine The Weekly Standard to amplify on them.
[...]
"...the Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel, who, after some blahblah about Paul being "in many ways, the ideal candidate for a conservative electorate hungry for a principled GOP nominee" and "the 'intellectual godfather' of the tea party movement," disqualified Paul on the grounds that he "fundamentally denies American exceptionalism and refuses to allow for decisive action to protect the U.S. homeland."


Naked Capitalism, Philip Mirowski: The Seekers, or How Mainstream Economists Have Defended Their Discipline Since 2008 – Part I

(I think the video below may be the one Mirowski is referring to. The link he supplies doesn't work, although this snippet(from 2009) isn't particularly illuminating one way or another.)


Inside Look - How Did Paul Krugman Get It So Wrong?


Uploaded by Bloomberg on Sep 20, 2009. Interview with University of Chicago Finance Professor John Cochrane (Bloomberg News)


Leslie Thatcher's December 5th interview with Mike Lofgren is well worth reading, even if the title is something of a misnomer. He only discusses Democrats beating Republicans in passing, but it suggests to the casual reader that it's another one of those tedious messaging and strategy pieces when in fact it's a broader discussion of US political trends over the past 20 plus years. If you missed Lofgren's article from the summer, it's also worth reading.

"I Know How to Beat Republicans": Interview With Former GOP Staffer Mike Lofgren

Some highlights:

"...the crystallizing event for me was the 2002 State of the Union speech identifying the axis of evil as Iraq and Iran - which had fought a long and devastating war and hated each other - and North Korea, which might as well have been on the dark side of the moon from the point of view of the other two countries. At that point, I thought, "This guy is going to war forever. There are no adults in charge." All subsequent events were merely confirmations of that intuition.
[...]
Establishment liberals just don't understand what's happening and are too often supercilious, condescending and off-topic.

Maybe I'll create a vocabulary primer. For example, take "empower." "Empower means "cut 'em off; you're on your own." Empowering seniors by cutting off social security means they're going to be mopping the floor at McDonald's.

The problem is that, for years, liberals coasted on the coattails of FDR, got very complacent and generated no new ideas. So, when the GOP came to the waterhole and stole their clothes, they didn't know what to do; they thought they had hegemony. Group one retreated to the ivory tower: effete crybabies, they became useless politically. Group two, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), became GOP-lite and a pure fundraising operation.
[...]
And somehow all this nonsense about how he is a Muslim and not a US citizen is perfect cover for how he slid in as a center-right president who pretty much followed George Bush in everything."

Eat more Kale, corpse fuel and the Keiser Report

(But not in that order...)

25 Nov. Keiser Report: Corruptify! (E214)
(via Skeptical eye)

This week Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss taxpayers in the West being pepper-sprayed with toxic debts while in China fraudsters receive five fingers of death. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Gregor Macdonald about Warren Buffett's investment in Japan and the cost benefit analysis of the energy policy of invading resource rich nations in order to liberate their oil.

www.gregor.us



Yahoo/AP: Vt. artist: I'll fight Chick-fil-A for my kale(also here and here)

Vt. folk artist says he'll fight Chick-fil-A giant for rights to phrase 'eat more kale'
Wilson Ring, Associated Press | MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) -- A folk artist expanding his home business built around the words "eat more kale" says he's ready to fight root-to-feather to protect his phrase from what he sees as an assault by Chick-fil-A, which holds the trademark to the phrase "eat mor chikin."

Bo Muller-Moore uses a hand silkscreen machine to apply his phrase, which he calls an expression of the benefits of local agriculture, on T-shirts and sweatshirts. But his effort to protect his business from copycats drew the attention of Chick-fil-A, the Atlanta-based fast-food chain that uses ads with images of cows that can't spell displaying their own phrase on message boards.

Sidney Morning Herald,"How corpses could power a television to save on energy"

Two from Polling Report:

Ronald Brownstein 11/22
Public Opposes Sequestration
With the congressional deficit-reduction super committee collapsing into stalemate, a solid majority of Americans say that Congress should block the automatic spending cuts established as a fallback if the panel deadlocked....

Thomas B. Edsall 11/22
The White Party
... With less than a year to go until the election, poll data suggest that the Republican "white" strategy has a chance of working. Since 2008, the Republican Party's biggest gains, and Obama's sharpest declines, have been among white voters. ...

[Sometimes when I can't think of a title, especially when I'm posting a grab bag o' links, I will just post the date. But today a title and an alternate, courtesy of Max Keiser: "Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without Hell."(6:30-6:55)]




...

13 November 2011: Iran, etc

Is it just me, hearing Fareed Zakaria's pain at restraining himself, wanting to say he recognizes part of his job is placating war loving oligarchs nutballs? We could feel bad for him, but one imagines he's well compensated to talk out both sides of his mouth, to hint that war with Iran would be crazy, that they are complying with regular inspections, but "who can say" what their intentions are?

Who, who?

Maybe this is as close as a talking head on TV can get to saying that US foreign policy is deliberately counterproductive and stupid, which is to say not very close. And another thing you can't say on television is that Saddam and Qadaffi were both allied with the US at one time, then US policy changed, so see what it got them. Or to put it another way: the Iranians must by now conclude that it would be insane to not get nuclear warheads.


Two from the Christian Science Monitor:
1.Iran nuclear report: Why it may not be a game-changer after all The Iran nuclear report released yesterday by the UN nuclear watchdog agency sought to corroborate details provided by US intelligence in 2005. But some nuclear experts are unconvinced.

In a 14-page annex to its quarterly report on Iran released yesterday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said new intelligence and other data gave it "serious concern" about the allegedly peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program. But the casus belli for military strikes that anti-Iran hawks in the US and Israel expected to gain from the IAEA report is far from clear-cut.

Imminent Iran nuclear threat? A timeline of warnings since 1979

The report is based on more than 1,000 pages of information shared with the agency by US intelligence in 2005, one year after they were apparently spirited out of Iran on a laptop computer. But deep skepticism about the credibility of the documents remains – Iran has long insisted they are forgeries by hostile intelligence agencies – despite a concerted attempt by the IAEA to verify the data and dispel such doubt.

"It's very thin, I thought there would be a lot more there," says Robert Kelley, an American nuclear engineer and former IAEA inspector who was among the first to review the original data in 2005. "It's certainly old news; it's really quite stunning how little new information is in there."

and 2.Mystery surrounds deadly blast at Iran ammunition depot

Lew Rockwell,"12 Facts About Money and Congress That Are So Outrageous That It Is Hard To Believe That They Are Actually True" [via Mimi]

Brayden Goyette, Truthdig, "Flat Taxes Are Big in the Former USSR. Have They Worked?"

Arthur Silber re OWS

Scott Olsen, the vet who was injured at the Oakland OWS protests last month, discusses his progress since surgery at his Google Plus page in a public posting, here.[via Gary Farber]

Alan Simpson interview (30 June 2011)

above: June 30 - Chrystia Freeland talks with former senator Alan Simpson at the Aspen Ideas Festival.


from yesterday's post:

This is that Reuters interview with Alan Simpson from June 30th at the Aspen Conference, when the debt ceiling faux debate was still going on. As I said, I think this is interesting because, by turns, he plays scandalous truth-teller and shifts back to shilling for collapse. (It takes a lot of brass to shill for 1890s style government, as he does in the debt commission report, and simultaneously attack the GOP for being unduly influenced by Grover Norquist.)



From Arthur Silber,regarding Elizabeth Warren and some other things. A lot of people are worried about you Arthur, and happy to hear from you again. Be well.


Rob Payne, "The Hitler syndrome and Iran"

Obama was the worst thing that could have happened to American politics. Weak, venal, self serving, a habitual and incurable liar, Obama has almost single handedly wiped out what passed for the anti-war movement in America. Obama had a mandate and full support of the majority of Americans to overturn the past eight years of Bush policy but instead of a president who might have tried we got Obama. That opportunity is long gone thanks to Obama and will likely not return for many years.

Christian Science Monitor:"To define poverty, US has a new (and improved?) formula"


Harvard Crimson, "Group Endorses Walk Out in Economics 10"

Students staged a walkout from an intro Macroeconomics class taught by famed economist Greg mankiw, protesting his teaching that a minimum wage is inefficient, which they regarded as imposing a right-wing slant on his course.


Jeff Nilsson,Saturday Evening Post: Taxing the Wealthy: The Continuing Controversy

Editorials from 1913 and 1935 show how the Post changed its mind about higher taxes for the wealthy.



ABC News, Pa. Cafe Boss: I Made Black Man Cashier, Got Fired
By JOE MANDAK Associated Press
PITTSBURGH November 3, 2011 (AP)

A white man claims he was fired as manager of a suburban Panera Bread shop for repeatedly having a black man work the cash register instead of putting him in a less visible location and having "pretty young girls" be the cashiers.

Scott Donatelli contends in a federal lawsuit he was denied extra medical leave and was fired in September after double hip replacement surgery earlier this year. He claims the reason was that he bucked race-related personnel rules communicated to him by a district manager for Sam Covelli, a franchisee based in Warren, Ohio, about 80 miles northwest of Pittsburgh.

Earlier this year, Donatelli says, the district manager told him, "It's what Sam wants and what our customers want. They would rather see pretty young girls" at the cash register.

Zachary Roth, Yahoo News: "Bankrupt church wants donations for pastor’s sick wife ferried in limo"

Some members of a bankrupt Orange County, Calif. megachurch are expressing outrage after fielding an email request for congregants to deliver food to waiting limos so that it can ferried to the founder's sick wife. The appeal comes weeks after a lawsuit charged that the founder of the Crystal Cathedral house of worship, Rev. Robert Schuller, and his family had been paying themselves lavish salaries and other benefits while the church was in financial straits.

30 October 2011

2 from CNN:"meet the 99%"(photo essay)


"Iraq project not worth the millions spent"
(note the original title, per the url, seems to be: "Report deems major Iraq project not worth investment or lost lives")


Two from Ian Welsh: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

In our current age the word demand has been debased. A day does not go by without some person or organization “demanding” an apology or retraction or that someone do something. These are not demands as a prior generation would have understood them.

and

Education and retaliation in OWS


Naked Capitalism, "The Natural Chaos of markets"(also here)

Prominent skeptic says he now believes in global warming(also here and here)

Evidently this study cost about 600,000 bucks and a quarter of the funding came from a Koch brother, which is apparently supposed to be a big deal. Is it? I'm reminded of the recent news that Goldman Sachs gave 5 grand to a credit union in NYC then demanded it back when the CU had dealings with the OWS people. Climate change is not a religious tenet, or at least it shouldn't be. Koch pays for goodwill like any other corporate entity, whether it's sponsoring a show on PBS or a study. Speaking of Goldman Sachs, it seems the sponsor "snagfilms.com" including "the art of overcoming poverty" which has people and images but I'm not sure what it's supposed to tell the viewer about overcoming poverty, the title notwithstanding. They also include some Buñuel and some anti-Islamic agitprop.


Republican lawmakers spin funding tall tales(also here)

see also
The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature site.


Lisa Margonelli| Slate: Alms for the Rich How policies meant to promote alternative energies are actually hurting the middle class.
Christian Science Monitor, Jared Bernstein, Guest blogger / October 27, 2011 "Republican tax plans will make inequality worse"

Jason Linkins, Huffington Post, Occupy Wall Street: Not Here To Destroy Capitalism, But To Remind Us Who Saved It (via Jack Crow, "Safe For Business")
Both reference a recent NYT op-ed by Nicholas Kristof regarding OWS. Jack Crow's commentary seems more useful, and Linkins essentially rehashes Kristof, both reassuring presumed squeamishly bourgeois readers that OWS represents nothing that should frighten them. Perhaps the co-op op-ed will soon be recognized as a new genre.


As I mentioned before, Jodi Dean of I Cite has been closely keeping up with goings on at OWS, and has offered a lot of interesting recent commentary.


Dmitry Orlov, Stages of Collapse Revised: “Joined at the Wallet”

I thought that government interventions in private finance would prolong the agony somewhat; what I didn't think was that they would prolong it even onto the death of the governments themselves! The effect of the interventions since then, in the US and in Europe, have been to knock down every firewall between public and private finance, to the point that now we are faced with two monstrous, and monstrously sick, conjoined twins, and the death any one of them is sure to spell the death of the other. Trying to separate them with a cleaver will be of no use: they will simply hemorrhage red ink and die sooner than they would otherwise.

Perhaps their early demise would be useful. Now that economic growth is pretty much over and done with, big finance and big government stand directly in the path of an orderly shriveling-up of the global economy. What I mean when I say “an orderly shriveling-up” is a process by which the economy shrinks at a healthy rate, corresponding to rates that were once considered to be a healthy growth rate, but in a way that allows most people to survive by providing a few essentials, such as food, shelter, security, access to medical care, ability to raise children and so on.
[...]
I wished for an orderly cascade of collapsing institutions, with enough of a gap between them for public psychology and behavior to adjust to the new reality. But almost four lost years of both government and finance betting on a future that cannot exist, doubling down every time they lose again, has dashed those hopes. The effect, I think, will be to compress collapse into a single chaotic episode. Global commerce will not be far behind, because it is dependent on global finance, and if international credit locks up then the tankers and the container ships don't sail. Shortly thereafter it's lights out.

He references his earlier article from February of 2008, "The five stages of collapse"[see also PDF link]

21 October 2011

video 1, above The Alyona Show ( Sep 30th) Can we Stop a Second Great Depression?

video 2 (October 1st): Keiser Report: 'WW3 will make us all rich' pt 1, Interview with Roseanne Barr in pt 2. (E191)


Apparently titles must grab your attention or they are useless. Are things that dire? Are the super-duper-mega rich that evil? I guess we'll find out in due time, or a bit sooner. I don't see how Soros' centralized treasury can work, especially if all you are doing generating more debt and not writing any of it off. It will only forestall a default and make it worse when it finally comes. As Stacy Herbert says at around 3:00-5:00 in the Max Keiser video, increased centralization is dangerous. She's not specifically talking about Soros but rather the EU's Barroso, but the principle still applies. Barroso seems more concerned with consolidating the power of the EU organization(and presumably Germany) rather than help the Greeks or the overall economic situation. Barroso talks aboput ensuring the "integrity of the Euro area...and it's financial stability" as if the fortunes of ordinary people in Europe are in fact aligned with the "integrity of the Euro area."

I'd say that's pretty questionable. Why should the weaker EU countries surrender more of their sovereignty to an EU central bank? So far the EU has been disastrous for them, much as the 2008 bank bailout has been a net negative for most Americans. When people discuss the bailout in the establishment media, they almost always do it in terms of our choice having been the bailout or nothing, which is obviously a false equation. (Although I recall that in 2009 Jim Rogers argued that even doing nothing may have been preferable. I gather he has since modified his view somewhat.) -JV


John Emerson, Trollblog:
Obama has blown his Presidency
JE:" I look at the future with dread. I have no useful advice to give and am just thinking day to day...It wasn't liberals that didn't vote in 2010. It was the new Democrats that Obama suckered with empty slogans and then betrayed."

Cops Who Stay Undercover and Murdered Whistle-Blowers

Abby Zimet,Common Dreams: In Praise of Hippies

Tea Party to Businesses: "Stop Hiring!"| www.truth-out.org

"Emergency Committee For Israel Board Member Advocates Genocide Of Palestinians" | Political Correction (via John Emerson, who feels that Rachel Decter Abrams is a pretty influential person.)

Debt, Deficits, and Modern Monetary Theory — An Interview with Bill Mitchell | Harvard International

ColorLines Magazine, There’s An App for That: Figure Out How Many ‘Slaves’ Work for You

from Wikinews 3 October 2011

A study in the journal Nature reports record ozone depletion over the Arctic during the winter of 2010–2011. Seven hundred people from the Occupy Wall Street protest are arrested and subsequently released after obstructing traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge (pictured) in New York City.

Are you like, a 1st ammendment girl? the Onion imbroglio

CNN: Did 'The Onion' take satire too far?

John King USA|Added on September 29, 2011
CNN's Candy Crowley and panel members discuss a fake tweet about a hostage incident released by "The Onion." I think if you take satire too far you lose your Satire License.


L.A. Times, "Onion story on Capitol Hill hostages sparks probe"

And finally, the link in question:

Congress Takes Group Of Schoolchildren Hostage: 'We Need $12 Trillion Or All These Kids Die'


Jonathan Turley, via John Caruso:

But perhaps the biggest blow to civil liberties is what he has done to the movement itself. It has quieted to a whisper, muted by the power of Obama's personality and his symbolic importance as the first black president as well as the liberal who replaced Bush. Indeed, only a few days after he took office, the Nobel committee awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize without his having a single accomplishment to his credit beyond being elected. Many Democrats were, and remain, enraptured.

Slate, Does Southwest Airlines Overpolice Its Passengers?

Jonathan Cook, Counterpunch, "The Dangerous Cult of the Guardian"

Two from Salon:

Thomas Rogers, "The theft of the American pension"

and Glenn Greenwald, The FBI again thwarts its own Terror plot:
Are there so few actual Terrorists that the FBI has to recruit them into manufactured attacks?

The FBI has received substantial criticism over the past decade -- much of it valid -- but nobody can deny its record of excellence in thwarting its own Terrorist plots. Time and again, the FBI concocts a Terrorist attack, infiltrates Muslim communities in order to find recruits, persuades them to perpetrate the attack, supplies them with the money, weapons and know-how they need to carry it out -- only to heroically jump in at the last moment, arrest the would-be perpetrators whom the FBI converted, and save a grateful nation from the plot manufactured by the FBI.

William Cavanaugh, Only Christianity can save economics

The financial crisis was not driven by materialism so much as by a desire to transcend material constraints.

To put it another way, far deeper than the desire for more "stuff" is the desire to overcome the limitations of the material world, of the human body and of death, and thus to be free from the scarcity and risk and dependence of a life that is materially based.

Maybe I'm missing something here. I don't understand what the difference is between materialism and trying to "transcend material constraints." I may write a bit more about this essay later.

Sharing the Secret Sharer

Apparently somebody decided to narrate Conrad's novella on Youtube, in a William Shatnery sort of way. You can read along while listening, if you've got an hour and 42 minutes. But don't do it at work! They'll catch you, and punish you, by making you read it out of a book. To your co-workers. Whether they want to hear it or not. While they're doing your work. Conrad comes to your cubicle? Not good. I would say doubleplusungood, but Conrad's ghost would start moaning, and we don't want that.

Brings new meaning to "I'll wait for the video." Watch it, listen to it, or read it? Why choose?

(Incidentally, I found this at YT while trying to find a snippet of a famous scene in Chinatown, the one where Huston talks to Nicholson about wanting to buy the future. I fail to see how this is connected, but what do I know.)





Cross-posted at "Hugo Zoom," 'cause sharing is fun.(except when it's not.)


...

31 August 2011

Cenk Uygur,th' Young Turks: Banks Got Free Money From Fed

Uygur's argument about bonuses is a bit silly, although by now it's conventional wisdom for many. The federal government should not have forbade big bonuses for CEOS but rather substantially increased the taxes on such payouts, including a hike ( say, to 45% or higher) in the tax on incomes over 5 million for those CEOs, and all other incomes in that region, bankers and others. Also, they could have taken over some real estate holdings from the banks in exchange for the bailout dollars, and sold them to sounder, smaller banks. Wealthy Americans are undertaxed in general, not just bankers, and Obama (and the 2009-2010 democrats in general) decided to be part of that ongoing problem, at precisely the time when they had the most favorable conditions to overhaul the tax code and make it more progressive.



Rakesh Raman, Why You Must Not Compare Anna Hazare with Gandhi

I don't know if Raman is right in asserting that Gandhi was unconditionally against violence, as opposed to preferring nonviolence when it was possible, but recognizing that there might be circumstances where it was not.


BDR pondered who the dems would run in 2016 if Obama loses. I commented:

I say Russ Feingold '16, if he's willing to hug enough bankers. Feingold would be valuable as a measure of co-opting optics. Just like converting Kucinich's 'no' vote on the Healthcare Reform Will Get You Act of 2010 was valuable, lest some normals furrow their brows and try to figure out why a lefty would oppose it. They needed Dennis K's vote, if not mathematically, then thematically.

Additional thoughts: I wrote that because I couldn't help but note that if anybody could have usefully challenged Obama from the left in the primaries it was Feingold. At this point Kucinich is probably regarded as too old, and as a two-time loser.

Ted Kennedy challenged Carter in 1980 and actually made it a race for a while, but today as our politics become increasingly tribal something like that seems impossible. Whatever you think of Kennedy, if anybody tells you that he cost Carter re-election, recall what happened to a certain military operation in the Iranian desert on April 24th, 1980.

Duncan Mitchel, "The Trouble With Privilege Is That Everybody Doesn't Have It"


2 pajama-clad girls take stolen goat for walk
"Everything went according to plan for two pajama-clad stepsisters who took a goat they'd freed from a Minnesota zoo for a late-night walk..."

I may have linked to a different site discussing this same study before:

Upper-class people less empathetic than lower-class people: study | The Raw Story

People from different economic classes have fundamentally different ways of thinking about the world, according to research recently published in Current Directions in Psychological Science. [...] “One clear policy implication is, the idea of nobless oblige or trickle-down economics, certain versions of it, is bull," Keltner added.

Slate, "People Always Say You Should Invest Like Warren Buffett. Here's Why You Can't"

Adam Kessler | Cognitive dissonance, the Global Financial Crisis and the discipline of economics [note: pdf link]

I consider the social-psychological concept cognitive dissonance as the best explanatory framework for understanding this response. Cognitive dissonance theory predicts that when real-world events “disconfirm” deeply-held beliefs this creates psychological discomfort in persons...

Or, denial is a river, with flowcharts n' copious statistics.

What Caused the Financial Crisis? Don’t Ask an Economist


Business Insider, "Here's The Bomb That Might Blow A Hole In Bank Of America"

CNN: "U.S. ranks low for newborn survival"

The GOP War on Voting | Rolling Stone Politics

Norway killer tied to drugs, the Tea Party and the libertarian conspiracy:

Peter Dale Scott -- poet, U.C. Berkeley professor and former Canadian diplomat -- has written a fascinating analysis of the mass killings committed by Anders Breivik, which he views as a "deep" event. "Deep" is Scott-speak for "conspiratorial," although he operates on a wavelength very different from that of the conspira-cranks who gravitate toward Alex Jones.

Boingboing.net: "Ayn Rand took government assistance while decrying others who did the same"

Sibel Edmonds, "Politicians aren’t as Incompetent as They Seem"

Arthur Silber update Aug 2011

A lot of people could use some help right now. But the abstraction is just that, and Arthur in particular could use some help right now.

25 August 2011

Koch Responds To Buffett: ‘My Business And Non-Profit Investments Are Much More Beneficial To Society'

America’s current tax system forces people making $50,000 a year to pay a higher rate than hedge fund managers making $2.4 million an hour. Warren Buffett penned an op-ed last week declaring that America’s super-rich have been “coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress.”

By way of counterpoint and context, there's Moon of Alabama's post linked below, with some cold water regarding Warren Buffet's alleged awesomeness. The devil's in the details, as is usually the case.
M of A - Buffet Is Lying On "Future Promises"

It would make sense, and save a lot of problems, if the U.S. would tax capital gains at the same rate as income form a regular job...

Two from Raw Story:
1. "Ron Paul suggests spending cuts could lead to riots"

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul wants to make deep cuts to spending and entitlements, but he’s worried there might be European-style riots in the U.S. if he gets his way. “I see the anger building and problems getting worse,” Paul told Fox Business Network’s Lou Dobbs Wednesday.

Ron Paul is a problematic figure for me. He generally comes down on the correct side with respect to civil liberties matters and his critique of the security state, as well as regarding our extensive network of military bases all over the world. But Paul and his son are pretty eager to tear down the social safety net, even as they have both made a lot of dough from collecting medicaid payments in their medical practices. Above all, do no harm. Or not.

2. John Dean rips Cheney’s memoir: It displays his ‘authoritarian personality’


Then and now, MLK and Malcolm X; I have a feeling Rob Payne and Duncan Mitchel were unaware of each other's similarly themed essays, both worthwhile, illustrating a similar theme drawn from different material:

Rob Payne: Forgetting MLK, "We cherry pick the past in order to cherry pick the present"

Duncan Mitchel:"He Who Controls the Past Controls the Future"


Dave Anderson, "Austerity kills"
Rachel Tabachnick, Talk2Action, "What is it About Uganda? Bachmann Campaign Faith-Based Organizer Arrested There in 2006"
(via Jay Taber, "Christian Dominion")



The Onion, "Report: At This Point, Most Americans Feel More Comfortable In Dying Economy" August 23, 2011 | ISSUE 47•34

"You get used to sending 50 resumés into the void each day and having them all go unanswered," said Mary-Lee Jones, 46, of Cleveland, who later called the enduring unlikelihood of ever finding employment "her rock." "The emotional trauma of not knowing if or when I'll work again has just become a regular part of my life. Honestly, not living on the knife's edge of poverty might make me a little anxious."

The report also found that many take comfort in the dependable stream of ominous fiscal predictions in the media, particularly in seeing, on a regular basis, the weary face of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on the cover of major newspapers, accompanied by giant bold letters announcing the dollar's latest slide.

"Even if the economy did start to make a miraculous recovery, all that would happen is I'd get my hopes up and then, boom, it would collapse again like it always does"...

Buy Suze Orman books or else

August 17, 2011
Personal finance expert Suze Orman tells CNN's John King how consumers can cope with Wall Street's wild swings.



Added On August 17, 2011
CNN's John King and Jessica Yellin talk about the president's new proposal geared toward creating jobs


Mother Jones,The Next Debtpocalypse: Fiscal Meltdowns in the States:Inside the plan to gut state budgets and keep corporate America happy.

the Huffy Post, "Obama For America's New Mexico Director Sends Out Email Bashing 'Firebagger Lefty Blogosphere'"




Star Tribune/AP, Report: Justice Department investigating Standard and Poor's mortgage securities ratings.
Updated: August 17, 2011 - 10:43 PM

Annie Lowrey, Deliverance:The U.S. Postal Service must make massive changes if it is going to survive

I generally like Annie Lowrey's reporting, but this was really disappointing, just the usual boilerplate about a government agency needing to become lean and mean and innovative, blah blah blah, at the expense of its workforce. Presumably Lowrey and her peers have to periodically remind you that they work for the Washington Post and mustn't rock the austerity boat. People worry about jobs, and the further deterioration of the economy. OK, how about not laying off 120,000 more postal workers and not getting apoplectic about how the USPS needs to break even? (Does the post Osama Afghanistan war have to break even? How about the not-war that we're not-waging on Libya? Couldn't we use cheaper missiles or fewer sorties and still achieve a protracted stalemate?)

Lowrey does mention "innovating" by allowing the Post Office to set its own postage rates (You know, like their private sector competitors already do), as opposed to waiting for the congress to vote on any rate changes. Of course they could have done this years ago if the Democrats and Republicans weren't intent on starving the beast. As one commenter observed, the problem is the Post Office is underfunded.

CNN: Bachmann: I'll bring back $2 gas How can you not vote for her?


Alternet, 6 So-CalledSo-Called "Job Creators" Who Won't Hire The Unemployed
Allstate Insurance, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and the University of Arizona are just a few of the companies advertising that they will only hire people who already have jobs.

TV reporter:"The Down House owner Chris Cusack said the customer called the bartender a "twerp" on Twitter, and the manager showed her the door."
Tweet Gets Houston Customer Kicked Out - www.ksat.com HOUSTON

-- A Houston diner is kicked out of a restaurant not for something she did, but apparently for something she said on Twitter. Wednesday, August 17, 2011.



Unintentional humor is often the funniest.(Mediamatters.org watches Fox News so you don't have to...)
Fox's Eric Bolling Asks If Warren Buffett Is "Completely A Socialist"



www.businessinsider.com: This Is For Everyone Who Thinks The US Can't Fund Its Own Debt
This idea that we need to borrow from China is dangerous nonsense.

Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes? | Rolling Stone Politics
Imagine a world in which a man who is repeatedly investigated for a string of serious crimes, but never prosecuted, has his slate wiped clean every time...

(OK, so she doesn't say buy my books or else.)

The Ides of August, approximately

Nouriel Roubini, Slate, "Is Capitalism Doomed?"
Karl Marx was right that globalization, financial intermediation, and income redistribution could lead capitalism to self-destruct.
Posted Monday, Aug. 15, 2011, at 2:17 PM ET

There's something amusing about this story carrying a Goldman Sachs ad. Or maybe it's not the least bit funny.

IOZ, on Ron Paul(and Dennis Kucinich): "Ersatz intellectual diversity superimposed on the public facade of the ruling class is an affect overlying an underlying unanimity among the actually powerful."

Sibel Edmonds has a website,and links to a bunch of other links, here.

Dennis Perrin, "Nietzsche's Abyss"

Rob Payne announces his pick for the 2012 presidential contest.

11 August 2011

Joshua Holland (Alternet) on the "Super Congress"



Two from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

1.Attorney for Graves, Rogers: Bank is at fault(via Unqualified Offerings)

Jeremy Redmon and Aaron Gould Sheinin:

CALHOUN -- While U.S. Rep. Tom Graves was calling for fiscal responsibility in Washington his attorney was arguing in a lawsuit that a North Georgia bank is at fault for issuing Graves a $2.2 million loan the bank knew he could not repay. Graves was fighting a lawsuit along with business partner Chip Rogers, the state Senate majority leader. The two Republicans, through a limited-liability company, used the loan to purchase and renovate a Calhoun motel that quickly went under.

The bank sued, alleging the two defaulted on the loan. The politicians filed counterclaims against the bank, accusing it of improperly declaring the loan in default after reneging on a promise to refinance it at more favorable terms.

2.Pa. judge gets 28 years in 'kids for cash' case | ajc.com

SCRANTON, Pa. — A longtime northeastern Pennsylvania judge has been ordered to spend nearly three decades in prison for his role in a massive juvenile justice bribery scandal that prompted the state's high court to toss thousands of convictions.

Dahlia Lithwick,Slate, "The GOP's war on the NLRB isn't just about airplanes and unions"


John Robb writes(July 29th), " I admire the way the US gov't used the budget fight to manufacture a black swan financial event out of thin air. Very GG of them. Of course, there will be lasting damage done that hasn't been considered even if it doesn't result in a default. "


The capital of hard times: With 28% of unemployment, a U.S. high, Arizona city twists in the wind. Erik German, Monday, August 1, 2011


Thoreau at Unqualified Offerings, "Hire one man to drop a bomb, hire another man to fill the crater with old tea leaves"


Poll: Christians Are Much More Likely to Condone Violence Than Muslims or Atheists


from the Christian Science Monitor, "Knights Templar: In Mexico, like Norway, criminals look to past for legitimacy"

The attacker in Norway and a Mexican drug ring both invoke the ancient Knights Templar to describe themselves. Why do violent ideologues and criminals search the past for inspiration?

Buckeye surgeon, "Irrational death"

Belarus Drafts Law Against Peaceful Gatherings (via NYT)


The class politics of the US debt ceiling crisis (I think this was from Jodi Dean)

Jay Taber, "Greed Kills"

In his 1994 book Civil Wars: From L.A. to Bosnia, Hans Magnus Enzensburger examined the consequences of societies built on systems that treated people as if they didn't matter. Introduce weapons and scapegoating, and pandemonium will ensue.

Thursday, August 11, 2011, Reality Zone:
"5 Reasons Why American Riots Will Be The Worst In The World"

via KFO, who writes,

20% is that portion of the landscape where government is recognized as an oppressor, not a force for good; where consumerism is seen as destructive, not liberating; where capitalism is seen as plutocratic, not empowering; where fashion-style-fine wines-fine dining-trendy literature are seen as corrosive diversions, not as fulfilling ways to spend one's time. The 20% is where we find that America is fatally collapsing because of hubris, greed, materialism, self-satisfaction, consumerism, and a pretense of being beyond and above failure.

Dennis Perrin,"Chaotic Masters"

...Instead, they rave on about Obama the Socialist Muslim. They cite the Founders as timeless seers whose 18th century social notions fit a 21st century global economy. They blast runaway spending but say little about corporate/military influence. That they didn't erupt when Bush expanded the state exposes their hypocrisy. Tea Partiers are no threat to the status quo. They espouse some vile opinions, but then so do many Americans.

Liberals pout and are equally locked down. Far from organizing grassroots resistance, liberals leap into Dem arms, afraid of the scary GOP. As I've said, it's a beautiful system for those who own it.

I tend to think that Dennis Perrin is closer to the mark. Things may get worse, maybe even a lot worse, but Americans, at least those who vote, seem to have an endless appetite for hitching their aspirations to co-opted faux outsiders, both on the left and the right.

Faith in the system

Ruin The Economy Or Not? Congress Still Unable To Decide

Also from The Onion; this is from last week, but needless to say the melodrama is still playing. Am I expecting too much if I'm disappointed that they don't point out that BHO is also trying to cut entitlements?

And(below),from August 2008,


Today Now!: How To Pretend You Give A Shit About The Election

I was reminded of this because Ian Welsh recently discussed a Firedoglake post of his from August '08, and I linked to the second Onion video at Hugo Zoom that summer.

I've been meaning to add Ian Welsh's site to the blogroll, as well as Jodi Dean's I Cite, both of which are very valuable to me, along with some others.

For example, Robert Bonomo(The Cactus Land),Bob Somerby(Daily Howler), Moon of Alabama, and Washingtonsblog.

However I hesitated, partly because sometimes I think of shutting down this wee blog. I'm not going to, although I may take a pretty lengthy break, say six to ten or twelve months. At any rate I wouldn't feel right doing so without consulting Bob in Pacifica, Mimi, and Micah Holmquist, and naturally they may still post. I hope they will.

I miss when Rob Payne was affiliated with us, although I understand his reasons for leaving, some of which is my fault, as he is a very gracious and decent chap. (As I said before, he essentially carried this blog on his shoulders at times.) I always looked forward to going to the web site when he was here, as I am always look forward to posts from Bob and Mimi and Micah today, as I also looked forward to Micah Pyre's posts in 2009. If you post solo you miss out on the pleasure of being surprised by your blog collaborators, although I guess if you're a big-shot blogger who takes getting 50 or more comments for granted every time you discuss your dog or cat or parakeet, you may not understand, or you may understand but not care too much about things like that.

Does blogging matter? Not as much as concrete action, but the sense of solidarity people can get from reading and writing political blogs matters, especially living in a surreal age of impression management and "optics" and a constantly changing, distracting spectacle. Maybe we should be disappointed that left and right-wing blogs don't have more of a conversation, although maybe they do and I don't see it, and maybe worrying about it is false sentimentality.

(There's a little more to it than "left=good", "right=bad", and the brutishness and tribalism that corrodes the culture is more complicated than left vs right, but I want to leave that discussion for another day. )

I note the conversion of Balloon Juice's John Cole from being a George W. Bush supporter to a team democrat booster in 2008, although in his case I think it illustrates Cole's recognition of Obama's right wing corporatist aspect more than anything else.

Ultimately millions of people are like John Cole, even if most of them don't blog; they prefer government that treats them like consumers (of constitutional services?) and asks them to vote every 2 to 4 years to reaffirm the legitimacy of the system but which they otherwise don't have to think about too much, like an insurance agent who shows you where to sign and assures you he's trustworthy and respectable by virtue of a genial manner and the numerous plaques on the wall, and doesn't want you to worry about the details apart from where to send your check.

To some extent this is understandable. Certainly it's preferable, or would be if it existed, when contrasted with a government that seems intent on making you worry that it's on the verge of collapse. But it's a fiction. It's a desire to have one's delusions and childish disposition protected, and that same desire helps open the door to precisely the people who create the opposite situation, with the manufactured crises designed to rattle us. Ultimately it requires a massive suspension of disbelief to give the people in power that much benefit of the doubt, and you have to wonder if the people who behave as if they have that much faith actually do. And if they don't, what do they tell themselves to make believe they believe?

I've talked to several persons I know who are reliably democratic voters, who are willing to accept the notion that BHO might be a weak leader, or the best we can do under the circumstances, or just befuddled and outfoxed by the wily Tea Partiers, etc. But they are usually aghast when I suggest he might just be a right-wing(not "centrist") crook and that Obama, Pelosi, Reid, as well as republicans like Ryan and Cantor are in collusion, whether de facto or otherwise, in a concerted effort to wreck the welfare state. And actually, if he is trying to ruin the economy for the lower 80 or 90 percent of people on the economic ladder, does it even matter what kind of crook he is?


Moon of Alabama, "Obama's Artificial Debt Crisis"

24 July 2011

video above: Keiser Report: Ideas for Revolution (E166)

via Avedon Carol, who writes,

Down in comments, CMike advises: "Max Keiser provides a minute or so of useless analysis but Stacy Herbert does spotlight a headline about "fair use" here which I found interesting."

snopes.com: Internet Petitions
www.snopes.com
Does signing online petitions serve any real purpose?


"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."
— Franklin D. Roosevelt

Obama Top Recipient of Murdoch’s News Corp. Donations?
uk.ibtimes.com

Political donations by News Corp., its employees and their families were evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, with President Obama the all-time leading recipient, according to a report from the Sunlight Foundation.

I hear and read a lot of people on the internets talk about revolution, some seemingly flippantly and some not, some anonymously and some not, etc. At this juncture I wonder what would happen if people just stopped voting, especially in presidential elections. You'll never get everybody to stop, of course. I remember reading somewhere that in the last Soviet election somewhere around 12 percent of those eligible participated. If that happened here(damn unlikely at this juncture), I'm guessing either the big media portals would downplay it or show you man-on-the-street interviews with people who boycotted the vote, with an emphasis on the nuttier sounding ones.

But even if you could persuade 70,80 million or more regular voters to not bestow legitimacy on the process and just stay home, would that be sufficient? Then what? A jubilant scene as the credits roll, with soldiers and hippies dancing in the streets, and billionaires giving all their money away? I imagine not, however much we have been conditioned to long for those kinds of endings. And even if the first two things occurred the third thing wouldn't happen, as the billionaires will just hire a different group of soldiers.

Of course, this decline in voter turnout may happen anyway, without any persuasion involved. It would more likely be a gradual process that hardly anybody would remark upon.

21 July 2011

The video is by way of Glenn Greenwald's column from earlier today,
"Cenk Uygur and the ethos of corporate-owned media"

Also from Salon(via Mahablog):

“Corporate America’s Sunshine Patriots.” “… as of last week, as per the website Zero Hedge and data analysts Capital IQ, 29 public companies — including Bank of America, JP Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, GE and Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway — each have more cash on hand than the U.S. Treasury.”

from Rolling Stone, "Corporate Tax Holiday in Debt Ceiling Deal: Where's the Uproar?"

Two from Dissident Voice,

Alton C. Thompson, The New Society: Part III: Toward a New Moral Equivalent of War

(Part 1, and part 2 are here.)

Phil Rockstroh, "The Arts of Life They Changed into the Arts of Death: Bachmann, Palin, Robertson and the limits of logic"

20 July 2011

This is old, and the language is arguably a bit hyperbolic. All the same, I couldn't help but remember this essay when I heard of the "Gang of Six" and Obama's fondness for their plan, because it sounds like it could be discussing BHO as easily as it's about GWB:


Clear-cutting the middle class, By H.N. Arendt, 2003


The Gang of Six plan supposedly reforms the tax code by removing one or two token tax breaks intended for wealthy executive types, while it lowers the top tax rate from 35% to 29%, or even less, and does away with the AMT. And, oh yeah, it cuts social security. On the news on TV they're saying it will raise an extra trillion in revenue over 10 years.

This is garbage of course, as the raging deficit they've made so much fuss about will only get worse, under such a scheme and there will be less revenue, not more. But for the sake of a breezy narrative on a 30 minute nightly newscast with commercials, the networks just need to compare it to the "Cut, cap, and balance" plan to make it seem like they're covering the story fairly. One imagines at least some of the reporters realize this is a crock, and that both plans are designed to head the US towards a fate like Greece's. I wonder, because the human tendency to believe what you are compelled to promote is also strong.

(Some of these are from June; I'm catching up.)
Man Robs Bank for $1 To Get Health Care in Jail


Pelosi's wealth grows by 62 percent

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) saw her net worth rise 62 percent last year, cementing her status as one of the wealthiest members of Congress. Pelosi was worth at least $35.2 million in the 2010 calendar year, according to a financial disclosure report released Wednesday. She reported a minimum of $43.4 million in assets and about $8.2 milion in liabilities.

Euronews.net: Budget cuts leave UK ‘unable to hold Falklands’


Guardian: Secret US and Afghanistan talks could see troops stay for decades

Robert Bonomo, "Who's Afraid of Ron Paul?"


Ben Doherty, The Age, "Fasting becomes weapon of choice for the disaffected"

Apparently hunger strikes by dissidents are 'aggressive', and they upset Mr. Doherty, who writes:

Ninety years on, the realpolitik of hunger is forefront in India. Fasts are common practice. They are effective, they draw public attention and force opponents to act. But also, they leave governments paralysed. Affairs of state and social reform are held hostage to one person's caprice.

And,From earlier today: Ian Welsh asks, “will I crawl on my belly, will I fight, or will I try to make a separate peace?”

15 July 2011

A commenter writes:

Somehow it seems that The South will never get any better. Nowhere is perfect, but The South seems to pump out a never-ending stream of demented brutality from men in positions of power. And the South seems to be the future of America.*

apropos of this article at Streetsblog, "Mother Convicted of Vehicular Homicide For Crossing Street With Children"

A 30-year-old woman in Marietta, Georgia was convicted of vehicular homicide this week – and she wasn’t even driving a car. The woman was crossing the street with her three children when a driver, who had been drinking, hit and killed her four-year-old. The driver, Jerry Guy, was initially charged with “hit and run, first degree homicide by vehicle and cruelty to children,” Elise Hitchcock of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. “Charges were later dropped to just the hit and run charge.”

The man has previously been convicted of two hit-and-runs – on the same day, in 1997, one of them on the same road where he killed Raquel Nelson’s son.

Guy will serve six months for killing the boy, but Nelson will serve up to 36 months – just for crossing the street with her child. Yes, it’s true: they were not in a crosswalk. Are there any crosswalks on that street at all?

The image is from the Google Street View of the intersection where Raquel Nelson's four-year-old son was killed. There are no crosswalks in sight. I don't know how you can be found guilty of 'vehicular homicide' when you're a pedestrian.

and, via another commenter,
http://peds.org/resources/pedestrian_right_of_way/


From John Emerson,"If you’re not a conspiracy theorist some of the time, you’re a sucker"

July 13, 2011 Gallup.com: On Deficit, Americans Prefer Spending Cuts; Open to Tax Hikes
Twenty percent favor deficit reduction by cutting spending only
by Jeffrey M. Jones


Joe Weisenthal , Business Insider: "IT'S OFFICIAL: The Whole World Thinks Republicans Are Dangerous Maniacs Threatening Everyone"

Dean Baker, "Economic Illiteracy" (via Rob Payne, "Trust in Obama")

CNN, "Tea party to GOP: We could make 'examples' of you over debt ceiling"



1958 interview with Aldous Huxley[video]

*I remember a New Republic article from the mid-90s or so, about how the Southern political model was being exported to the rest of the US. I wish I could remember the title or the author's name.

update: I think this is the article I was thinking of, from 1995, by Michael Lind(partial paywall). It seems that later he expanded it into a book.